[FM19] You Have To Start Somewhere

[TerminalPortugal]

CHAPTER ONE: NEED NOT APPLY

The story of Vasco Carreira, I guess for many people would be a bit of sad one. Born in London in 1986, to immigrant Portuguese parents. He quickly found a fascination with the sport of football. Back home his extended family were avid Sporting Lisbon fans and the football was a religion in both the UK and Portugal. When he was 8 years old he began playing the game in an organised fashion at his local school and before long, he had seemingly surpassed his friends and pretty much everyone at school.

His development continued and when he was 13, his uncle, whom had a few connections to some clubs in Portugal, got him into the youth set up at Vitoria de Setubal, where he would continue to thrive, and the big clubs namely Benfica and Sporting, where both beginning to become interested with the youngster.

This was destined to come to an end when he was just 15 years old. Having been selected for Portugal U17’s, he was having a fine game, having already set up his team-mate for the first goal as Portugal led Switzerland 1-0. However a bad tackle, was to not only end his involvement in the game early in the second half, but would go on to end his playing career in the sport he loved.

Depressed by what had happened to him, he moved back to England and back to his parents, and decided he would dedicate himself at school. For a time he had fallen out of game after his release from Setubal. The doctors had told him realistically he would never play football again, but he had learned a lot about the game and he felt he understood it better than many that were involved in the game. When he reached the age of 25, after finishing university with a degree in computer science, he decided that he would spend his spare time digesting football and analysing games. At the start he had no following but after a few years he slowly built up the following to his blog. In time this would become a weekly show on YouTube where he would pick a game that weekend, watch it and then break it down in intricate detail.

For the final week of the 2018/19 season, Vasco did something a little strange and finding himself in Dartford with work that weekend, he decided that he would buy a ticket to semi final of playoff between  Dartford and Braintree to see whom would reach the National League South Playoff Final and when it was all said and done and Braintree had surprised 2^nd place Dartford to advance to the playoff final, he wrote an article on the game.

A few weeks went by when one day checking his emails, he found a rather strange email laying his inbox. It was from a person named David Skinner and the email explained that he was the co-chairman of the Dartford and that he really enjoyed reading the article on the game and provided some compliments as to the nous of the person who would written it from a perspective of understanding the game. That was interesting enough, but even more interestingly, the email went on to ask whether Vasco would be interested in perhaps coming down to the club for a chat about the potential of working for the club, perhaps in the coaching staff.

Vasco’s eyes lingered on the email, was this club offering him some sort of job, on the basis of an article he had written on a no-name blog. He took the phone number that was appended in the signature of the email, and out it in his phone. In his mind the email seemed genuine but was most likely a wind up. There had been this kind of email before, in a little while it was out of his mind.

However the next week, there was another message, this time expressing disappointment at not receiving a response. It was at this time that Vasco decided it was time to give number a call and find out exactly what was what. It rang several times before a woman answered on the other end, the voice said “Hello, you have reached the mobile phone of David Skinner, can I ask what your query is about?”

Vasco answered somewhat confused, that the voice did not match the name. “Hi I got an email last week and it stated that I should call this number. I think yourselves might want to talk to me about a job”.

“Ah, are you Vasco? David has been hoping you might call him back. When would you be available to come to Dartford for an interview?”

“Interview?” Vasco retorted, “I haven’t actually agreed to anything…I am actually not too sure what this is all about to be honest”.

“Ah okay, well how about I book a time for you to meet with David and you can talk about the opportunities here at the club. He was hoping you might be interested in working for him.”

“Okay I guess that would be fine”.

“Where are you based?” the woman asked inquisitively

“North London, Barnet way”.

“Right, well David is actually in London next weekend, for a charity event. He can perhaps meet you beforehand. How about we say you meet at 1pm at The Allsop Arms pub in Baker Street on Sunday?”

“I guess that would be fine”, Vasco responded. “Sorry I am not sure I got your name?”

“Oh sorry…how rude of me. I am Emily, I am David’s PA. I am just answering his mobile, but he did say that if you called, that I should arrange for yourselves to meet”.

“Right okay then…I guess I will see David next Sunday; 1pm” Vasco stated a little confused by where this was going, and just like that with a short "bye bye", she was gone.

The conversation had intrigued Vasco. He was still pretty sure that something was fishy about the whole thing, but he decided that it would interesting to see whom exactly would show up at Baker Street if anyone. The next week trundled along, as he installed servers around London, which for now seemed to be the main thing that his company was asking him to do. He did not really have much passion for it, but it paid the bills.

When the day arrived, Vasco decided it would be a little formal to wear a suit, he couldn’t even remember agreeing to an interview, and he hadn’t even seen a job description of whatever the role was…not that there would be role he thought. Still afterwards he could grab some lunch and a few drinks if all else failed.

He got on the Northern Line at High Barnet and made his way down to King’s Cross before changing onto the Metropolitan Line. Vasco was early to pub, as he got himself a pint from the barman. As he turned to face the door, a man in his middle age, walked wearing a suit and approached him.

“Vasco I presume?”

“Hi, yeah. I guess you must be David?”

“Yes that’s me, I see you have a drink. I will get one myself and we can have a chat”.

After a little pause and little small talk waiting for the beer, David indicated to table across the bar and the two sat down”.

“Well I must say it is good to finally meet you. I thought you weren’t going to respond to me at all” David said.

Vasco clearly showed some sign of regret as David interrupted the silence

“Not to worry though, I’m not sure I would respond either. I was perhaps a little bit cryptic in what I was after and I guess it was unsolicited. So no hard feelings.”

Vasco chimed in “What is it that you want exactly? It seems a bit weird offering me a job via email without meeting me first”.

“Ah yes…well now that you mention it, it probably is. Look I got sent you article and it really struck a chord with me. It really made me understand why we lost the playoff semi final, and after reading it made me think, well I should get in contact with whomever wrote it.”

“Ah okay…well here I am” Vasco replied.

“So tell me about yourself?! How is it you have such a keen understanding of football tactics?”

“Well I used to be one I guess, quite a while ago now. Nothing major, just at U17 level, but never made it through…injury unfortunately to the knee.”

David seemed generally concerned by the news “That is a real shame, what club were you at?”

“It was out in Portugal, Setubal. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them”.

“Yeah I have, don’t know too much about them, but definitely heard of them.” David paused and had a drink of his beer before continuing, “So are you Portuguese?”

“My parents are, but I was born here. My uncle got me a trial over there and they signed me up”.

David chuckled “Well you must have been pretty good then.”

“Well look here is the thing… I was impressed by what I read, and to be honest, I have wanted to branch out from the coaches we can get in the National League South, often they come with a fair bit of baggage and are set in their ways, or you get an old player like we did. We actually just lost our manager recently…he doesn’t want to the job anymore, actually”, David said betraying that he didn’t seem too bothered about losing the manager that had led them to 2^nd place last season.

“I am just really keen to get some new blood in. With that in mind I have a few questions?”

“Are you interviewing me?”

“Well I guess I am”

“But I don’t know what the job is?”

David paused and grunted on his pint

“Right you are. Well look I was going to ask you to come in and help Player/Manager Jamie Coyle, with the tactical side of the game, but since he is no longer around in that capacity. I guess I am asking whether you would like to be the new manager of Dartford? Or at least I am gauging you for that job, as this is of course an interview as well.”

Vasco looked a bit perplexed “Well I have to say I never really considered it, you know I have a job currently already…”

David interrupted “I am sure you do, but the way you wrote that article just makes me think you might want a shot at being the main man at a real club. What’s more I think you would do a good job.”

The afternoon continued for another hour and in the end the interview seemed to be more of an informal chat, where the two seemed to get on well. At the end of it David looked at his watch and said he was running late, however he was clear before he left, that he thought Vasco was the right man for Dartford, and that he should think it through for a few days and then call him.

Vasco remained in the pub for another 30 minutes, and didn’t know what to make of it. The Dartford club website, seemed to show that he had indeed met the Co-Chairman of the club, and he had been offered a job. Whether it was a good idea to get into football management still remained to be seen however.

A few days later Vasco gave his response indicating that he was leaning towards taking the role. When the contract came through he was pleasantly surprised to read that it was paying £750 per week, which was about the same as he was making anyway fitting servers. There was one thing left to do. David had said that they should arrange for both parties to sign the contract at the club, and this would give him an opportunity to meet the other Co-Chairman and other bigwigs at the club. The date was set and it was now time for Vasco to enter football management.

 

[TerminalPortugal]

CHAPTER TWO: SIGN ON THE DOTTED LINE

The day of the meeting with the board, I got on the train at London Bridge and it was about a 45 minute journey down to Dartford station and then probably about a 20 minute walk to Princes Park Stadium where Dartford play their home games. Arriving at it, I actually thought it was reasonably impressive for a club of this stature, and to be honest it gave me a bit of sinking feeling in my stomach as if it confirmed that I might be biting off more than I could chew.

As I entered the stadium there was a woman sitting behind a reception area, wearing a name tag saying “Joana”.

“Hi, I am here to for a meeting with David Skinner at 3pm”.

She quickly looked at her computer and looked back up at me.

“Yes I can see you here. If you would wait here in the seats on the right someone will be with you shortly”.

I walked along to where she indicated and waited in the seat for about 5 minutes, when suddenly another lady, probably in her 20’s came along and stuck out her hand to greet me.

“Hi Vasco, I’m Emily. We spoke on the phone to arrange the meeting with David. David, Steve and Bill are ready to see you now.”

“I presume Steve and Bill are the other members of the board”.

“Well Steve is the other co-chairman and Bill is on the board as a director”.

She guided me along to a largeish room, where Dave got up to shake my hand whilst greeting me and quickly showed me along to the other persons sitting in the room, whom also got up as I entered.

“Good to see you Vasco. This Steve, we share the chairmanship here at the club and this is Bill, he gets more involved in some of the day to day affairs of the club when neither of us are available and of course he also sits on the board”.

“Great to met you all I said”, I said

David piped up again “We are all delighted you are here to sign your contract. I have spoken to the Bill and Steve and they are as supportive as I am about you taking over the reigns here.

The rest of the meeting was pretty cordial as the board asked a few questions and I responded. I asked them what they wanted from the closely approaching season. Bill seemed to be the one to answer this question responding in a convoluted way that a top half finish was what the board felt was the club should be achieving. It seemed as if Bill might be the man who would take most notice of the day to day affairs of the club.

After a while David left the meeting room to call for Emily, who came in with the contract and camera, and there and then the contract was signed and the customary photos were taken.

After a while it was all done and I chatted with Steve and Bill a bit longer, while David dealt with something that had come up. They seemed nice enough but perhaps a little less convinced than David was about me. I got the distinct feeling that David had most of the power at the club, and Steve and Bill were going along with things, but I may have been misreading things.

I decided initially I was going to commute to the club, first by train and then later on by car. A few days after I met with the board, and signed my contract, the next Saturday, I finally met the staff team I would be working with at the club. There was my Assistant Manager Adam Flanagan whom was 40 years old and had in the job previous to this been the manager of Concord Rangers for 3 years. This was particularly useful to me, since at this stage I did not really know how to run an effective training session, so he could definitely help with that. Tony Burman had started his football career back in 1975 with Queens Park Rangers, and had seemingly retired from football back in 1996 when he left Dartford as manager. However 22 years later he was back, asked to look at after the Youth Teams at the club.

On the first team coaching side we had two individuals Tony Kessell and Phil Murray. Tony looked after the goalkeepers and Phil the outfield. This seemed a little light to me.

Everyone seemed nice and was at pains to stress how supportive they were of me, probably because they knew I was their new boss. Speaking to Tony Burman he mentioned that two of the players were helping coach the Under 18 team in Deren Ibrahim and Andy Pugh, and added to this there were two full time coach in Anthony Adeyileka and Sean Scolding as well as the Under 18 Manager himself Jason Long. It seemed strange to me that the club were spending so much staff resources on the Under 18 team at this level. But at this stage I was in listening mode and was not really attempting to change anything.

My main message to the staff was to elaborate the kind of style of play I wanted to play, and I wanted Assistant Manager Adam Flanagan to address the training sessions so were going to be ready to play this style. I was pretty honest about my shortcomings when it came to setting up training and the team, were understanding and wanted to support.

In my message to staff team the message was the following, I wanted the team to work the ball around the pitch and try and keep hold of possession with short passing where possible, we were going to work the ball into the box, and look for the ball out wide, with the wingers and fullback creating overloads on the wings to create space. When we lost the ball I wanted to set up pressing traps and triggers to counter press the opposition to win the ball back in dangerous areas, and generally I wanted to counter attack, when the opposition overstretched themselves. Defensively it was important we tried a high line to complement our attacking intent and engage the opposition high up the field, always looking to get back in possession. To this end we were going to start with a 4-1-3-2 and go from there.

I think the staff were a bit dubious of really how successfully we could implement that style of play, this far down the leagues, but Adam didn’t question it, and was thankful for the instruction on what they would need to work on when the players got back from their leave.

The club had given me a laptop to use whenever I needed but I also had an office at the stadium. I was checking my emails there when I noticed that David had sent me an email informing me that for the club to be able to employ me as a manager I had to at least be studying for my badges, so they had already enrolled me on the National C Licence, the first of 7 licences I would need to get to the top tier of football management theory. I did not see this being much of a problem for me, and I was glad that the club were doing things by the book and I would get some tuition provided and a path to get the coaching badges at the club.

Also in my inbox, was an email from Emily, informing of the already pre-agreed set of fixtures for the pre-season. The first one set me back somewhat, the first game was against Portsmouth at home. After this we travelled to Mertsham, before hosting Reading Under 23s, and then two away ties against Enfield Town and Arlesey Town. This news worried me, facing a team like Portsmouth from the football league in the first game could really expose me. I was going to need to really work with the players when they came back, hopefully some of them were half decent.

 

[TerminalPortugal]

CHAPTER THREE: MEET THE TEAM

On the 25^th June 2018, it was my first time meeting the Dartford team. I looked at it as a very important date, as it would be my first chance to really get a chance to look at the players, but it would also be the first time I might find that the players did not particularly respect a manager that had never managed elsewhere before. In fairness I needn’t have worried about that, despite the fact that I suspect that not everyone would have been sold on me, most were fine and just wanted to get onto the training pitch.

The playing squad was actually pretty large for a side that was plying its trade in the National League South. Since the formation is going to ostensibly be a 4-1-3-2, I am going to address the squad against the formation we will be playing.

In the goalkeeper positions we have three options. Bailey Vose, is our number one goalkeeper, he is on loan at the club from Colchester United. The back-up will be Deren Ibrahim, he is actually an international since he plays for Gibraltar. Third choice, we have Ryan Nicholls, whom at 21 years old still has plenty of time to improve.

At left back we have two very decent options in Mark Onyemah and Callum Driver. Tom Bonner whom is more a centre-back can also cover there should we need him to, and Billy Roast can play there if we are down to the bare bones.

At right back, Callum Driver is by far our best option, with again the versatile Tom Bonner as back up. Jordan Wynter on loan from Maidstone United can play there at a push.

Tom Bonner is by far and away the number one centre back at the club and the aforementioned Jordan Wynter is the next best. Billy Roast, is first sub, and really this is an area, where we are probably lacking a body.

We will deploy a defensive midfielder, and Bonner and Wynter are again one and two here, meaning that Wynter may effectively be first choice at DM. Roast is third choice and we have 21 year old Ronnie Vint, who can probably do a job here.

Joe Healy is the best centre midfielder at the club and Elliot Bradbrook is very close to him. Behind him we have Lee Noble and Billy Crook.

At left midfield Ryan Hayes and Joe Healy are pretty close for the best option here. Ben Greenlagh is also a good option at left midfield. Bradbrook and Andre Coker can play here as well, but they really seem to struggle, so it would have to be in a pinch that they would get the start here.

At right midfield it is a similar story as the versatile Ryan Hayes and Andre Coker on loan from Maidstone United are the best options, Tom Murphy is a less versatile option that is probably up next at left wing. Jordan Wynter despite being a good centre back can also play at right midfield not too bad.

We will play with two strikers, so really need two to start and two reserves. Delano Sam-Yorke, is arguably the best striker at the club, although he is a Target Man, so he may not fit in as well as if we went with a system that accommodated to his strengths. Next up with him is Charlie Sheringham, son of Tottenham and Manchester United legend Teddy Sheringham. He is far more our type of striker. So it could be a front two of Sam-Yorke and Sheringham to start the season. A very good first backup at least provisionally will be Andy Pugh, and our fourth striker ain’t too bad either and that is Kudus Oyenuga.

It is a big squad and there are not too many areas that I see as obvious weaknesses. If I had to improve the side, it would possibly be at left back where we could probably get someone better in and at defensive midfielder, where really the best guys in the position are centre backs and so we could use a new face to make that position his.

So with everything subject to change depending on form in the pre-season games and injuries. I think the starting line up may be Vose, Onyemah, Driver, Bonner, Roast, Wynter, Healy, Hayes, Coker, Sam-Yorke, Sheringham.

We have three weeks to prepare for our first pre-season game against Portsmouth and by then we really need to have a lot of the nuances of how we are going to play down, to avoid a very humiliating start to our season and my management career.